Think Tank: New ideas for the 21st Century: Bring on the culture crunch

A dose of austerity may improve the arts

The bright spot on the financial horizon is that - in theory at least - after a period of disinfection a new, sanitised world awaits us. In culture no parallel purge is necessary, because the arts in Britain are in blooming health. We know because arts bodies say so, ministers echo them, and most critics bring up the chorus. Against their judgments there can be no appeal: now that the arts have become a state religion, dissent would be sacrilege.

Nowhere is it suggested that the era of British boosterism that is crashing to its close in the City might have any counterpart in our galleries, theatres, fiction, films or television. At the start of the year of the shrivelling pound, James Purnell, then our culture secretary, said that in Britain a renaissance comparable to 15th-century Italy was under way: "This is not an overstatement, it's exactly true."